


Praise be to Whateverthefuck

by orphan_account



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alpha Cora Hale, Canon Divergence - After Season 3B, Derek Hale is Good at Feelings, Derek Hale is No Longer a Fail Wolf, Derek is Kind of Well Adjusted Now?, Erica Reyes Lives, F/F, F/M, Fae & Fairies, Isaac is a Little Shit, Isaac is a Tease, M/M, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Malia Tate Gets Shit Done, Mysterious Deaton, Sassy Peter Hale, Scott McCall & Stiles Stilinski Bromance, Scott is a Good Friend, Season 4 hasn't happened yet shh!..., Stiles Stilinski Is Bad At Feelings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-29
Updated: 2015-04-29
Packaged: 2018-03-26 08:39:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3844372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“What?” asks Stiles, scrunching up his nose. He knows that look. It’s the same look Scott got on his face that time Stiles face-planted in the lesser fae court and almost got the whole pack condemned to death by the Goblin King. Apparently tripping and falling at the feet of his majesty is a grievous insult among Goblins, who knew? </p><p>Or: Stiles makes an assumption that pretty much ruins, or saves, his life depending on how you look at it</p>
            </blockquote>





	Praise be to Whateverthefuck

**Author's Note:**

> Story title taken from a little in-joke I have with myself that will be popping up throughout the story and is bound to get a laugh from my peeps in the ambiguously religious crowd (Woohoo!). For those of you fully devoted to one particular religion I apologise for my blatant disrespect. I mean it in the least offensive way possible I assure you.  
> Also I apologise if a few mums pop up instead of moms. I'm Australian. Sometimes my eyes skip past that stuff because, y'know, we're right and you're wrong? And my brain automatically sees it as the correct spelling because it is?  
> That being said it is 2:30am here in Aus and I have not had a beta reader is forever sooo cut me some slack if there's a few typos. I'll get around to fixing it eventually. Probably. Maybe.

“Oh” the faerie says, blinking at Stiles with wide, darkly lashed, sea-foam green eyes. “Let me fix that for you.”

She does some kind of complicated Bollywood dance move with her hand and Stiles feels more than sees the air around him shimmer and vibrate. There is a sound like air releasing from a tire and his ears pop in a rush. Stiles sways on his feet, strangely dizzy for absolutely no reason, and the faerie steadies him with a benign smile, like she works her freaky magic mojo on losers like him every day and is pretty much over the effect it has on the swooning mortal masses. Since Stiles has no way of knowing how old she is (freaky goddamn fae with their creepy ageless faces), and she pretty much wiped the floor with that marauding band of brownies single handed (he and Scott leant against a couple of trees way _way_ out of her path of destruction and ate some of Melissa’s triple fudge brownies to pass the time) Stiles has absolutely zero problem believing it.

Stiles blinks and he can _hear_ his eyelashes move. “Woah. Freaky,” he says.

Stiles turns to make eyebrows at Scott—like _hey man can you believe this shit?_ — and instead finds Scott staring, eyes wide and jaw dropped comically.

“What?” asks Stiles, scrunching up his nose. He knows that look. It’s the same look Scott got on his face that time Stiles face-planted in the lesser-fae court and almost got the whole pack condemned to death by the Goblin King. Apparently tripping and falling at the feet of his majesty is a grievous insult amongst Goblins, who knew? “There’s brownie in my hair isn’t there?” he asks, glum, but mostly resigned. Knowing his luck it isn’t the triple fudge kind. Stiles knew he was being too optimistic earlier when he thought he’d avoided the brownie splash-zone. No seriously, when fae goddess lady did her thing it was not all twinkly fairy magic like in the Disney movies okay? It was blood and gore and death to the extreme. Medieval type shit. Like, except for her eyes she is _legit_ covered head to toe in blood, and what Stiles is only confident labelling _bits_. The brownies were thieving dicks for sure, but like, poor brownies right?

Scott’s still looking at him, dragging his eyes up Stiles body in a way that’s making him super uncomfortable because he and Scott are bros not, y’know, _bros_.

Stiles levels Scott with his best doom-hath-arrived face. “No seriously dude if there’s some Brownie guts in my hair or something you better tell me or next time I’m at your house I’m not coming for pizza and video games, I’m coming for your moms brownies and it will be carnage—nay!—a _desolation_ of brownies.”

“There’s no brownie in your hair Stiles,” Scott says, and is it just him or does Scott sound kind of faint? Whatever, Stiles’ relived. Stiles thinks this may be the first supernatural show-down of the year where he hasn’t come away with something gross on or attached to or leeching off of his person.

Pretty much on the regular these days, there’s something new and disgusting on his face, or clothes, or in his hair. Something highly flammable or very dangerous usually because God, or Budda, or fucking Krishna hates him. No seriously. He figured it out a while ago. At this point Stiles has just resigned himself to his role as Fates, or Gods, or Whateverthefucks little butt-monkey. On any given day Whateverthefuck will be like: Oh hey lookey-there! A dangerous chemical mix up in the lab! Better have Stiles pick up the dangerous chemical thinking it’s saline solution and, just for kicks, have him mix it with something extremely volatile so there’s a massive explosion! That’ll be a hoot!—Or—Wowee! That’s an impressively high tower of plates! Three feet high and not even wobbling! Better get Stiles in here so he can conveniently smack right into them and almost bleed to death again! It’s been a while since Stiles almost bled to death! Can’t have him thinking his time on the mortal coil isn’t doomed to be fraught with misery and danger!

Sometimes it sucks to be him, is what Stiles is saying. Sometimes it really fucking sucks.

Which is why the absolute last thing he expects to hear come out of Scott’s mouth is: “Dude, you’re glowing.”

Stiles looks at Scott dubiously. “Like radioactive glowing? Like a ‘it looks like Stiles is going to die of radiation poisoning in the next half hour’ type glow? Like a glow of imminent death?”

Scott swallows and actually looks a little awe-struck now that the comical shock has worn off. “No like… like you’re _glowing_.”

“Gee,” says Stiles dryly, “thanks for clearing that one up for me Scotty.”

Then something weird happens. Well weird _er_. Let’s face it, the way his life is weird just doesn’t cut it as a descriptor. The sliding scale for weird is pretty much of no use to him. That being said, Stiles is pretty sure even if there _was_ a relative sliding scale for weird in his life this would still rank up there with the existence of flesh-eating Wendigo’s and Goblins existing in a parallel realm (there are some things that even folklore/mythology geeks are not prepared to experience): Stiles feels the faerie come up behind him, like she’s being magnetised to his back or something. Like Stiles is some kind of human fridge. Like she’s a detached limb he hadn’t known was vital to his existence until this very moment. Like _she’s a part of him_.

It’s, well, _weird_.

“Hey woah _woah_!” Stiles says, flailing forward a few steps when she gets _way_ up in his business and rounding on her with a stern face that he suspects comes off kind of freaked out and flustered. Normally that kind of complicated footwork would have him tripping all over himself, but to Stiles it felt like he was gliding. Like he was weightless, every movement unconsciously quick, precise and effortlessly sleek. For a split-second Stiles is worried he’d somehow switched bodies with Scott Freaky Friday style and inherited all his latent werewolf grace, but nope, Scott’s still standing there. Staring. 

And actually now that he’s facing her, the faerie goddess is staring too. Staring like Stiles is a piping hot steak dinner with all the trimmings and extra crispy potatoes that she’d very much like to sink her teeth into. It’s flattering, definitely flattering, and it kind of makes Stiles want to throw himself into her arms like a love-struck movie heroine (she’s all kinds of hot okay—even covered in blood), but it’s also kind of…creepy? Like, the way she’s eyeing him up and down makes him want to cover up even with all the layers? Like he feels kinda dirty? Like she should want him for more than his body? Like, for example, does she even know how mad delicious his cheese scones are?

Stiles points at her, pretentiously offended and gearing up for a rant of epic proportions, like seriously it’s going to be amazing, when he notices his skin for pretty much the first time ever. 

“Huh,” Stiles says, instead of the million other things he wants to say like: _I’m not a piece of meat!—Or— You are maybe possibly old enough to be my great great great great great great great grandmother!—Or— You don’t even know my name, or have any kind of appreciation for my cooking and that just will not do!_

Stiles is a guy. It’s not like he spends a lot of time staring at himself in the mirror or anything, but he’s pretty sure his skin wasn’t milky white yesterday. Well, yeah, sure, he’s always been pale, but not like _this_. Not in an albino-who’s-never-seen-the-sun way. And even if he was albino and he’d managed, somehow, to be completely oblivious about it for seventeen years, he _seriously_ doubts he would have missed the shining. Like, that’s the only way he can describe it. His skin is shining, nay, _glowing_ in a majestic display worthy of a Disney movie, or a unicorn fantasy. He’s pretty sure he looks like the moon right now.

Stiles stares at his finger, fascinated and amazed, bringing it close to his face to examine its lustrey lustre. He may or may not go a bit cross-eyed. “Dude!” he yells, because _c’mon Scott._

“Yeah,” says Scott, hands thrust deep in his pockets, looking somehow simultaneously freaked-out and smug. 

“Why didn’t you tell me!” Stiles hisses accusingly. He’s running his hands all over his body, lifting up his shirt—yep glowing there too—and surreptitiously checking behind himself for any extra appendages— no, thank Whateverthefuck— because, well, with his luck he wouldn’t be surprised. He’s pretty sure his skin is glowing all over. Present company being what it is he’s not going to pull his dick out to check. 

Scott looks offended. “I did tell you!” 

“You said I was glowing! You did not say I was _glowing_ glowing! You did not say I was glowing _supernaturally_! This is why we clarify things Scott!” 

Scott crosses his arms over his chest and frowns fiercely. “I _did_ tell you. You just didn’t listen.” 

“Ugh,” Stiles rolls his eyes and turns back to the fae goddess lady _whatever_ because he’s pretty sure whatever is happening to him is her fault. There was definitely something suspicious about that Bollywood hand dancing. At the time he kind of got distracted by Scott staring, which in turn got him ruminating over Fate or God or Whateverthefuck’s mission to single him out from the squishy human masses and make his life miserable, and, well, that’s never a road that leads to productive thinking or intelligent reasoning. 

Stiles points at her again and this time forcibly does not get distracted by his shiny shiny skin. “What did you do to me?” he says accusingly and the fae goddess grins like she’d been waiting for the question. It reminds Stiles of a shark: a hungry, mocking shark that wants to devour him in a variety of creative ways. 

“Nothing,” she says sweetly. 

“Bullshit.” 

“Fae cannot lie,” she says, which, yes okay. He’d read that too, but, well, the obvious issue here is that very premise could be a lie to trick gullible fools like him into thinking fae do not lie when, in fact, they have the most flaming pants in the entire history of pants. 

“How do I know you’re not lying about not lying?” Stiles asks, crossing his arms. 

“Dude what?” Scott says, but the fae goddess and Stiles both ignore him. 

She grins wider. “You do not, but I assure you I am telling the truth.” 

“That doesn’t make me feel any better,” Stiles says, regarding her doubtfully. 

“Perhaps this will ease your doubt.” 

The faerie draws her thumb up to her mouth and bites down, bringing blood up to the surface. Stiles watches with reluctant fascination as the blood pools on her skin, a verdant shiny green. Then, suddenly, she’s close enough that Stiles can count her eye-lashes and he swallows nervously, but all she does is hold out her thumb where he can now see the blood is shimmering under the light, a rainbow shine like oil under the sun overlaying the vivid green. 

“Drink,” is all she says, and Stiles is about to argue, and Scott is _definitely_ about to argue. Stiles can hear him growling, but instead of hiding behind Scott like he normally would some left-of-field instinct has Stiles enveloping her thumb like an _idiot_ and _swallowing her blood_. 

“There,” she says, seemingly satisfied, “now you will know for sure.” 

For a few moments Stiles has no idea what she means, but then he feels it, a bright zing of awareness in his chest, lancing up his spine and suffusing his brain with _knowledge_. Instantly he knows everything there is to know about the faerie, no, no mere faerie, faerie princess, soon to be queen of all unseelie, the unseelie court and all its demi-courts. Stiles’ breath catches and he looks at the fae princess— Carmalene the Vengeful, Carmalene the Just, Carmalene the Breaker of Bonds— and suddenly he gets it. 

Scott makes to lunge at her, teeth bared, claws out and Stiles stops him, just…stops him. Stiles has no idea how he does it, he doesn’t even touch him, but Scott just stops. Stiles should be worried about that but he’s pretty focused on Carmalene and how he suddenly knows her name, how he suddenly knows _everything_. 

“She can’t lie Scott,” Stiles says and his voice sounds dreamy even to his own ears. “She really can’t. Her trying to lie would be like you trying to fly. She physically can’t. As royalty she’s not equipped for it. The future queen of the unseelie cannot be one of the untruthful,” he says sagely, and even though a small part of him is freaking the _fuck_ out, he knows it’s true like he knows there’s grass under his feet. It just is. 

“Dude,” Scott says, looking freaked out and a little suspicious, “how do you even _know_ that?” 

“I have no idea.” 

He and Scott share a commiserating look, like, _dude why is that always the answer?_

Seriously. They never know anything. It’s depressing. 

Carmalene shrugs, examining her nails. They’re not even chipped, Stiles notices with an odd mix of admiration and wariness, admiration because he’s pretty sure her saw her eviscerate a brownie with them and wariness because _he’s pretty sure her saw her eviscerate a brownie with them_. “All fae can share knowledge through blood. It is how we communicate.”

Scott wrinkles his nose. “That’s gross.”

“Yeah, maybe you guys should invest in creating some kind of database so you don’t have to go full vampire every time you want to swap recipes,” Stiles suggests. Scott nods thoughtfully and Stiles experiences one of those rare moments of realisation like, _yeah, I got lucky with this one, he’s pretty awesome_ , and feels a warm rush of fondness. Scott catches him looking and makes a face so Stiles makes a face back. Then they’re just two morons making faces at each other in the presence of a fae queen. Ah. Friendship. 

Carmalene sniffs. “Vampires are dirty, lowborn creatures,” she dismisses, “and besides blood-sharing would not work for the non-fae. They do not have the magical inclination or the physical capacity to process such a means of communication. It would be harmful, perhaps even deadly. It would also be unnecessary. We are not all living in the middle-ages you know. We do, in fact, know what the internet is and how it is used.” Carmalene gives Stiles and unimpressed look. He’s halfway towards being successfully guilt-tripped before what she said catches up with him.

“Wait what?” Stiles says, utterly stunned, because, well, even though he was kind of expecting to be tricked it still stings. “You lied!” Stiles accuses.

Two things happen simultaneously: Carmalene gets super offended super quick and Scott starts growling. Magic sparks from her left hand, green and gold and fiercely angry. She advances on Stiles, expression fierce and Scott leaps in front of Stiles to intercept her, eyes flashing alpha red, one clawed hand raised threateningly. He drops into a crouch, ready to spring, and Carmalene barely takes the time to sneer at him before she’s focusing all her creepy attention on Stiles.

Scott launches himself at her and Carmalene turns her sparking left hand on Scott.

“Get out of my way you dirty were,” she hisses, and with a dismissive flick of her hand sends Scott hurtling through the forest and out of sight. Stiles gapes after him.

“Dude!” Stiles exclaims. “What the fuck is your problem?”

“Is that all you can say? How pathetic,” she says, mocking and full of disdain.

Stiles has a comeback. Seriously he does. It’s witty, and cutting and brilliant as fuck, but it’s also, unfortunately stifled by the hand she has around his neck, squeezing tight and lifting Stiles off his feet.

“Urgh,” he gurgles.

Carmalene sneers and shakes Stiles like she wants to rattle his internal organs loose.

Stiles hangs suspended in the air while Carmalene snarls at him, eyes flashing the same eerie green as her blood. “You will die for that insult little one. I had hoped you would be one of my chosen, but your liars-tongue has proved you false and unworthy of the honour before my very eyes. And to think, I could’ve had a moon god in my court for the first time in a thousand years. How disappointing…”

Stiles is drawing a blank on understanding _anything_ she just said, but figures that’s kind of less important than the fact that he’s going to die if he doesn’t get air in the next fifteen seconds.

“We could have been great,” Carmalene is saying, a sheen of tears making her green eyes sharp and luminous, and Stiles’ vision is going black around the edges and he's having trouble paying attention to anything but the frightening lack of oxygen and the cruel grip around his throat—but then something amazing happens.

Through a break in the trees Stiles sees the moon and immediately a cold front moves through his body from head to toe, jolting him into awareness. It’s not the cold of imminent death, which, y’know, Stiles was kind of expecting, but instead is the kind of cold that invigorates and awakens. It’s like diving into a fresh ocean wave or a standing under a cascading waterfall fed by glacier melt. Stiles feels alive. More alive than he’s ever felt. Sensation returns to his body and his muscle fibres start to twitch with renewed energy until he’s practically vibrating with it. It kind of feels like he’s _drawing energy from the moon_ , but that’s ridiculous. 

Whatever she juiced him up with before, Stiles gets the feelings it's not working in her favour now. 

Carmalene frowns at him. “What...?”

Something fresh and energised, urgent and alive gathers in his stomach and spreads down his arm to his right hand. Stiles manages to look past Carmalene’s grip on his throat in time to see that hand start to glow. He watches with what can only be described as a sense of _right_ sitting in his chest, as his hand starts to glow until it’s surrounded by an orb of pure shining silver, a brighter more intense shade than the shine on his skin. It’s so bright, in fact, that after a moment it obscures Stiles’ view of his hand entirely. 

Carmalene barely has time to look confused before the light is leaping from Stiles’ fingers and propelling her screaming through the air in the opposite direction of Scott. 

Stiles drops to his knees and the glow fades.

Stiles stares after her, wide-eyed, heart pounding a fucking percussion beat in his chest. He gasps in greedy lungful’s of air and tries very hard not to panic.

He stares at his hand. Just…stares at it.

If there is a relative sliding scale of weird for his life Stiles is pretty sure he just broke it.

\--

Stiles is trudging through the forest in the direction Scott was thrown, following the trail of broken branches, when he notices his skin is still weirdly pale and _glowing_ , and he swears.

Fuck this. No seriously, fuck his life and his shitty ass luck. Stiles really wishes whatever Carmalene did to him would just _go away already_ so he could get on with his life of ill-advised daring and danger without the magical homing beacon she has, for whatever reason, saddled him with, but he's pretty sure he's got about as much chance of that happening as Derek Hale has of finally getting his shit together and moving on with a life that doesn't revolve around mourning his dead family. Stiles would pray if he didn't think it would get him laughed out of prayer town. He's that desperate. 

Stiles is staring at his arm trying to fucking _will_ it back to normal when he hears a branch break and he whips around to stare into a cluster of bushes.

A small, stupid part of him that watched too much Scooby-Doo as a kid wants to investigate, but the larger, saner part of him, the part that’s been terrorised by werewolves and kanimas and hunters and darachs and fucking _nogitsunes_ these past three years knows to high-tail it out of there like a hero in a bad slasher movie, because no way is he opening that basement door when there’s a perfectly good front door to run through. 

Stiles keeps walking and when the silence gets, well, _silencier_ , he doesn’t look behind him no matter how much he wants to. If something evil is out there he doesn’t want to know about it. 

\--

Stiles finds Scott inside a hollowed out tree, a hollowed out tree he appears to have hollowed out with the sheer force of his impact, and feels a little guilty. Not guilty enough to cave to his pleas to be taken home instead of to get checked by a medical professional (seriously Scott you could be magically concussed or something), but guilty enough to take him to Deaton instead of his mom. 

On the way to Deaton’s, Stiles looks down at his hands on the wheel and notices they’re not glowing anymore and that his skin has gone back to his normal pale-but-not-snow-white-pale colour, both of which are miracles of the highest calibre. Like seriously, thank Whateverthefuck for that. Stiles had no idea how he was going to explain that one to Deaton. Knowing him, he probably would’ve said something stupid like, _ah, yeah, well I let this hot magic faerie touch me with her powers and then I got super pale and started to glow? That’s okay right? That’s normal?_ And Deaton would’ve just stared and told Stiles to get the fuck out of his clinic, like stupidity was catching. Yeah, on reflection Stiles probably shouldn’t have let her go all Bollywood dancer chic on him in the first place. That was a bad move. But, well, hindsight is twenty-twenty, and at least he knows not to do it next time— unless he wants more glowing silver orbs flying out of his hands. 

It’s really not as unappealing an idea as it should be.

Predictably when they turn up at the clinic, Scott slouching moodily against the outside wall, not looking at Stiles because he actually has the mental age of an eleven-year-old pre-teen, Deaton ignores Stiles banging on the door. The sign says closed, but Stiles is pretty sure Deaton has a bed out the back and the closed sign is really just a _fuck off I’m sleeping_ sign, so he bangs louder and, when threats don’t work, he calls out that Scott’s hurt. 

Stiles would be offended by how quickly that has Deaton unlocking the door, but he’s actually pretty warm and fuzzy over the fact that Scott has a father-like figure that actually gives a shit whether he lives or dies. Deaton ushers Scott inside and Stiles follows, slumping into a chair while Deaton examines Scott. Once he’s finished, Deaton nods to himself and gestures for Scott to sit up on the exam table.

“You more than likely have some backlash from the brownies magic. You may experience some mild symptoms: headaches, muscle aches, disorientation, but that should all pass within the next forty-eight-hours.” Deaton tucks away his pen-light and goes to his draw of potion-thingies in the corner of the room, the one that always make Scott crinkle his nose in disgust, and pulls out a little blue bottle about the size of a bottle of nail polish. “I’ll give you this to speed things along. Magical backlash can be…confronting in some cases.”

“What do you mean confronting?” Stiles asks because God knows Scott never will. Scott still hasn’t cottoned on to the fact that Deaton is actually shady as _fuck_ , and probably never will. Stiles likes a lot of things about his buddy Scott, but the man’s naïve faith in people isn’t one of them. Like, how exactly did Deaton know they were brownie hunting? Stiles certainly didn't tell the man and Scott hasn't been in to work since last Thursday when this started going down so he couldn't have said anything. God knows the rest of the pack wouldn't have come even if they were half-dead and riddled with wolfsbane bullets. Which means, of course, that Deaton has known what was going on with the brownies since last week and has, since then, made absolutely zero effort to be helpful. Pfft, and Scott wonders why Stiles doesn't trust the man. Still, Stiles decides to clarify some stuff, because in his experience it’s super important to have all the information when it comes to supernatural goings-on and he's pretty sure Deaton wouldn't let Scott die to preserve his aura of mystery. Well, mostly sure. “And actually Deaton, Scott got blasted by a fae queen slash goddess so he probably needs something stronger that that little, er, potion thing.”

Scott glares at him and Stiles shrugs like, _hey dude had to know_ , with a touch of, _you’ll thank me later when you’re not bleeding from your eyeballs because you underestimated her magic or some shit like that_

Scott makes a mutinous face. “Yeah, well, Stiles was glowing! He probably has magical backlash too!”

Stiles blinks. He’d…completely forgotten that was relevant. Wow, it is times like these Stiles realises it's a wonder he's not already dead. If Scott’s biggest weakness is his unrealistic need to save everyone to ever exist ever, then Stiles’ is that he's so outwardly focused he never notices something is wrong with himself until it’s too late. Case in point: nogitsune possession—he totally would have cottoned onto that earlier if he has even an iota of self-awareness. 

Because he knows Deaton is going to quiz him until his ears bleed Stiles tells him the whole gory, terrifying story, and watches his eyebrows do complicated wiggles throughout that kind of makes it look like he has a pair of caterpillars dancing on his forehead. He leaves out the bit where he drank her blood of course, because, well, he's pretty sure the glowing was the most important bit and also it's more than a little embarrassing that he drank some woman's blood just because she asked him to. It's like, geez, can anyone say desperate Virgin?

After he's finished relaying their grand tale of daring and adventure, instead of saying any of the things Stiles knows Deaton wants to say, Deaton gets…shifty. 

Deaton’s face is doing that carefully blank mask thing he likes to use when he’s secretly freaking out inside. Stiles has a sixth sense for it at this point. He doesn’t even need to see it to know it is happening. Kind of like how animals can sense natural disasters. 

“What is it?” Stiles sighs, and when Deaton looks like he’s going to be shifty _and_ evasive, Stiles glares. “Yeah and don’t even think about being cryptic, or finding some way to deflect the question with a titbit of supernatural know how that makes us feel like you’re saying something important, and y’know, _relevant_ , but actually winds up being completely useless. If you know something, we know something. That’s how it’s going to work now.”

Deaton looks at Stiles and even though his face is composed Stiles just _knows_ he’s thinking what a little shit the Sherriff’s kid turned out to be. Stiles knows for sure that Deaton would love nothing more than to really tear into him, but is bound by some ridiculous notion that he has to be the calm, composed mentor type. He and Deaton don’t hate each other or anything. Most of the time Stiles actually likes the guy, but, well, they _see_ each other. Deaton knows Stiles is really an interfering little shit who brings most of his supernatural doomsday problems on himself and gets his friends in hot water with him, and Stiles knows that Deaton is not on their side as much as Deaton would like to make out he is. It creates some tension.

Still, that’s a pretty serious case of dead-eyes he’s pointing Stiles’ way, even for him.

 _Yeah buddy_ , Stiles thinks, _well get in line_. Stiles is pretty sure every adult he’s ever come into contact with has fantasised about killing him one way or another. It’s just one of those things he’s come to expect. It’s gotten to the point where he doesn’t take it personally anymore. Challenging the superiority complexes of people in positions of authority is Stiles’ favourite past time after all, and that comes with certain baggage. Heavy, death-threat riddled baggage.

“Doc what’s wrong?” Scott asks, all earnest faced and wide-eyed, and _of course_ Deaton caves. 

“If the two of you had an encounter with one of the fae the backlash will be different.” Deaton admits, going quiet for a moment in a way that makes Stiles nervous, before continuing. “All magic has after effects, even to creatures of magic, but fae magic is particularly cruel to mortals. I’ve heard of cases where the backlash from a single instance of magic poisoned people for years, mimicking several human diseases and cycling between them to avoid detection and poison the host. Fae magic is…crafty. In addition to being cruel it is also smart. It will not be easy to banish, and it will fight you.”

Scott swallows. “What do we need to do?”

Deaton sighs and holds out the blue bottle for Scott, going to the open draw and getting a different one for Stiles in cringe-worthy a shade of lurid purple and handing it over too. Scott runs his fingers over it, face troubled. Stiles slips his into his jacket pocket. “We will have to wait and see how the backlash will present itself in you both. Until it does, take the potion before bed and come back to me tomorrow after school for another. If you experience any symptoms during the day come to me immediately. Other than that… there’s nothing else we can do.”

“Has anyone ever died?” Stiles asks, because even if it’s morbid and horrible to think about he has to know and he suspects Scott does too.

“Yes, but I do not believe that will happen to either of you. You may not even get any symptoms at all," Deaton says, but he's not looking at their faces as he says it and Stiles gets this horrible pit in his stomach that won't go away.

Stiles and Scott look at each other and Stiles sees the doubt in Scott’s eyes even as he tries to smile reassuringly at Stiles. 

Yeah, something tells him they won’t be that lucky.


End file.
